


looking with my eyes closed

by insert_something_clever_here



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Child Abuse, Eating Disorders, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, sad child just really needs a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-08 01:00:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8823739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insert_something_clever_here/pseuds/insert_something_clever_here
Summary: They stop letting you go to school when you’re seven, because you stabbed Jeremy Biggs in the hand with a pair of scissors. It didn’t matter that he had pushed you, and called you some bad things, because no one ever listened to your side of the story. You hadn’t meant to hurt him. At least, you don’t think you did.(or: chara's life leading up until when they got to the Underground)





	

**Author's Note:**

> ahh hello! so um yeah this has been sitting in my "incomplete" folder for almost a year now, and i'm not even really in this fandom any more, but i'm kinda really proud of this and want to post it any way. there was originally gonna be more, hence why it was in the "incomplete" folder, but it felt kind of unnecessary, so i cut it out and just found a good stopping point. well thats it, i guess.
> 
> oh yeah, there are lots of intense topics in here, so if they're triggering, please don't read, you know the drill. please read the tags.
> 
> mmkay that's actually it. on to the story
> 
> (title from "too young to feel this old" by you me at six)

They stop letting you go to school when you’re seven, because you stabbed Jeremy Biggs in the hand with a pair of scissors. It didn’t matter that he had pushed you, and called you some bad things (some of which you didn’t even really understand what they meant but you just _knew_ they were bad), because no one ever listened to your side of the story. You hadn’t meant to hurt him. At least, you don’t think you did.

 

Your mother spits nasty words at you, and you get the belt for the first time. You scream for help. But nobody comes.

 

They keep you in the basement for a week after that, the ugly welts all over your body making the hard floor that much more painful. You scream until your voice is raw and broken. You break anything you can get your hands on.

 

When all the fight has left your body, you sit on the ground, shards of glass and plastic digging into your skin, and you cry.

 

Your mother is not happy when she finds what you did.

 

“What the _fuck_ , Chara!” she shouts. It had looked like she brought you something to eat (oh god you’re so hungry when was the last time you ate? you can’t remember) but she leaves it in the hallway and carefully picks her way down the debris-covered stairs. She yanks you up by your arm and you inhale sharply. She slaps you. “Don’t you fucking hiss at me, you little brat.” Her face is close to yours, and you could bite her, poke her eyes out, jab her in the neck—

 

“Stop staring at me, you creep.”

 

You try to shake away the bad thoughts, but they won’t go. Your eye twitches, and you clap a hand over it immediately.

 

She narrows her eyes at you, glares, before she turns on her heel and leaves you alone in the darkness again.

 

You stop eating when you’re nine. Well, on purpose, at least. You just thought that someone would notice. Maybe someone who comes over to the house, because they don’t let you outside anymore, but that doesn’t end up working, because you get locked in the basement whenever there’s company. _Where’s your daughter? Oh, she’s sleeping_.

 

Their words cut into you like knives because _you’re not a fucking girl_ but nobody seems to _get_ that, so you claw at your arms and don’t eat and bang your head against the wall and scream and scream just to get the _hurt_ out and the _badness_ out but it never works! It never fucking works!

 

You quickly figure out that you don’t have any energy when you don’t eat, and they let you stay in your bedroom because _you’ve been so quiet lately, almost like a normal child, thank the lord_.

 

Your fingers trace the hollows between your ribs, the curve of your jutting collarbone. You hear your parents talking in hushed voices at night, and _finally_ , you think, they’ve _noticed_ something.

 

“What are we going to do with her?” your mother whispers.

 

“Whaddya mean, what are we going to do? Just get the thing to eat! It can’t die, the police would be here in a minute and you know where we’d end up? Jail. I’m not going back there.”

 

“Yeah, well, how do we get it to eat?”

 

“That’s your problem.”

 

“Jesus Christ, Jared. We agreed to have a child _together_ —!”

 

“That _thing_ is not a child! That’s a — a demon!”

 

Huh. You lean back on your pillow and let this statement wash over you. Are you really a demon? Maybe you are. Because really, where’s the proof that you’re not?

 

You still don’t eat though, even if they push the food in your face, or make your favourites, and the effort is nice, you guess, but you kinda just want to die, and well, you’re already on this path, so why not, y’know?

 

Everything gets weird, then. Colours blur together, and everything is in slow motion, and you’re _so cold_ all the time and everything just _hurts_ and you want it to _end_ _already_.

 

You’re too weak to protest when they put you in slightly cleaner clothes and stuff you in the backseat of the car. You get to the hospital and they shove a tube down your throat and wrap your arms in clean bandages and lock you up. Your parents pretend to be concerned, and you pretend you don’t exist.

 

They put you in the nut house and try to get you to talk about your feelings, but demons don’t have feelings, so you don’t talk.

 

One of the nurses calls you a girl, and you punch her, out of reflex.

 

They put you in a room with padded walls and a rubber floor that smells like piss and cleaning supplies, and you start freaking out, _I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry, it won’t happen again, please don’t hurt me_ , and they try to get you to take a pill but you _can’t trust it_! They’re going to _hurt you_! You scream and thrash around on the floor with your eyes screwed shut and you just want to stop thinking, just for a little while, _please, god, let me die_.

 

And then four of them come into the room, and you scream louder, _somebody help me_. They hold down your flailing body, toothpick arms against beefy ones, and jab something into your ass. You hiss at them, spit in their faces, ignore the heaviness in your limbs, stay awake, you have to _stay awake_ , damnit!

 

They finally release their hold on you as your head hits the floor and your eyes slide shut.

 

You stay at the hospital for a while, you think, but all the days blend together and the food sucks so you don’t eat it, and then they put the tube back in you. They catch you when you try to take it out.

 

The others stare at you with something akin to pity in their eyes, _oh, that poor little kid, they’re only ten, why are they in a place like this?_ and you want to rip their faces off.

 

But it’s better than being at home. Anything is better than being at home.

 

Then they start talking about discharge. You’re pretty sure you’re just as crazy as before, but the hospital probably just wants to get rid of you, so your parents show up and play the role of Good Parents, _oh, we’re just so happy our little baby’s better,_ and they take you home. You don’t want to go.

 

The act drops as soon as you get in the car.

 

“Don’t you ever do something like that again, y’hear me?” your father says, tightly gripping onto the steering wheel.

 

You stare sullenly out the window, not answering.

 

“Four fucking thousand dollars. You better be thankful, you little shit. Your mother and I should have gotten rid of you when we had the chance.”

 

You block him out after that.

 

Life at home seems to get even worse, if that was possible. You lose all the weight you gained at the hospital, and then some. Your parents don’t seem to give a shit. You start eating some again, because you really don’t like the way the world spins whenever you want to move. You need to move.

 

You start sneaking out of the house, because you just need to run. You don’t think about where you’re going, just that you have to get away, just for a little. But you always come back.

 

You have a collection of sharp objects in your room, in the basement, in your pockets, in case you need them. A pair of scissors in a crate with mutilated barbies and broken tea sets; the blade wrenched from a pencil sharpener in your pants pocket; a sharpened knife, the most prized of your collection, under your worn mattress. The cuts appear on your body at an alarming rate: your arms, your legs, your stomach, your face, no part of you is safe from your own hands.

 

You don’t celebrate your birthday. You don’t even know when it is. You don’t care anymore.

 

You decide to end it all a couple months after you get home.

 

You sit on the bathroom floor, array of blades at your feet, a pool of blood surrounding you. You didn’t lock the door, but you think you maybe did that on purpose, wanting someone to find you and maybe care or something.

 

Your mother pounds at the door. “You’ve been in there for an hour; I need to use the fucking bathroom!” She jiggles the handle, probably expecting it to be locked, and the door swings open. Her eyes widen before they narrow, and she walks away without another word. A few minutes later, she returns with a bucket of water and a mop. She sighs, and leaves you alone again.

 

Blood is really hard to get out of tile.

 

You try again a few weeks later, in the basement this time, swallowing all the pills you could gather up. It’s not as peaceful as you expected, and you end up retching, on your hands and knees, in a corner of the basement. Your dad comes to see what the racket’s about, sees the empty pill bottles, and kicks them.

 

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters, shoving his fingers down your throat. “ I’m not sending you back to the fucking hospital,” he says as your eyes water and more of the pills come up. After a minute, he stands up, looking absolutely disgusted. He wipes his hands off on the arm of your sweater. Finally, he looks you in the eyes, contempt radiating off of him, as he spits, “Do you want me to just leave you next time?”

 

You don’t answer.

 

The day you climb Mt. Ebott, you’re armed with your knife and your ratty sweater, which you’ve been wearing for the past few weeks. It’s big enough that you can curl your legs up into it, and you do just that on the bus ride to the foot of the mountain.

 

You honestly didn’t know what to expect. You knew the stories, of the monsters sealed there, of rumoured disappearances, and you wanted to disappear, as well. Maybe the monsters would eat you or something , though you hoped it wouldn’t be that painful. And they might not even be above ground. But even if you couldn’t find a way to off yourself fairly easily, you’d die of starvation soon enough. The hole was a godsend.

 

Knife hooked into your belt loop, you throw yourself off the edge. The world goes black.

 

…

 

And then you wake up.


End file.
